News published: 08 February 2024

Celebrating conservation progress for the Dune Willow, part of the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Plants of Concern rare plant monitoring program

A January 2020 storm had battered the dunes in Illinois Beach State Park in Zion and pushed Lake Michigan inland, flooding vast areas of the park. David  Johannesen, a volunteer for the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Plants of Concern rare plant monitoring program wadded through frigid flood waters with a GPS unit and located the 12 remaining dune willows (Salix syrticola) in the park.

Working with a sense of urgency, a team from Plants of Concern and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, took cuttings from the surviving dune willows that spring. By June, they had nearly 60 new plants—grown by the Garden’s plant production staff—ready to go back to Illinois Beach.

But plants grown from cuttings are clones, genetically identical to the plant they are cut from. To build a more resilient, genetically diverse population, they would need the dune willows to produce seed. With 12 surviving dune willows and individual plants having only male or female flowers, the team needed to get creative to help them reproduce.

Planting around the surviving dune willows, they established groups of genetically mixed male and female plants—some in wetter areas, some in drier, hoping to ensure a portion survived the unforgiving conditions along the lakefront. And, as Plants of Concern does, they collected a lot of data.

Walking over undulating dunes with a GPS unit, Plants of Concern staff and volunteers found seed on a female dune willow for the first time in June 2023—a little more than three years after they planted the first dune willow cuttings. In October, Plants of Concern staff planted the first dune willows grown from seed, a major step toward securing a future for the species at Illinois Beach.